Hello!

The 2023 WordPress Annual Survey result and the WordPress Foundation Annual report have been published. There is a new initiative for the revival of WordPress communities in Latin America.

Also, WP Tavern is back after a hiatus, with James Giroux being the first of the seven shortlisted candidates to publish first.

Don’t forget to subscribe and listen to the podcast version of this newsletter on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, where you can hear more details and discussions about these topics and more.

See you next week!

Team WP-CONTENT.CO

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📰 WORDPRESS & AROUND

All the updates around WordPress and its closely related technologies

2023 Annual Survey results and next steps

The WordPress Annual Survey result is now live. As per the survey, the feeling of being welcome in the WordPress community among contributors decreased to 57% versus 64% in 2022, and contributors feel appropriately recognized less in 2023 (46%) than in 2022 (51%).

• WordPress Foundation 2023 Annual Report: The report shows a gradual increase in the number of WordCamps and attendees compared to 2022. There are more insights such as the total number of workshops, the top ten meetup countries, and so on.
• Merge announcement: Plugin Dependencies: The post provides a detailed explanation of the upcoming plugin dependencies in WordPress 6.5.
• Announcing the Second Cohort (2024 Q1) of the WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program: This cohort is made up of over 50 diverse contributors, each either matched with a mentor or part of a task-focused project under the guidance of multiple mentors. The program will span over six weeks starting from Feb 19th, 2024.
• Help test WordPress 6.5 Beta 1: Beta 1 is available now and test reports from the community will ensure all issues are ironed out before the final release.
• What’s new in Gutenberg 17.7: The latest update brings shadow support to more blocks, data view enhancements, refined link control UI, and so on.
• Project: Reactivation of WordPress Latam Communities: The post summarises the main objectives and various stages of the project for the revival of WordPress communities in Latin America.
• EU Regulatory Success Prompts Open-Source CMS Leaders to Form Alliance: The Open Web Alliance is a formalization of the more loose Inter-CMS Working Group that recently scored a huge regulatory win by changing the language in the EU’s Cyber Resilience Act. Also, this post has been published by James Giroux, who is the first of the seven applicants to publish an article in the two-week trial.
• WordPress Sustainability Team badges: The post outlines the proposed criteria for achieving the Sustainability Team and Contributor badges.
• Design Share: Jan 29-Feb 9: The design team has shared an update on a few projects they have worked on over the past couple of weeks.
• OpenAI working on web search product: The creator of the popular generative AI tool ChatGPT may be working on a search engine to try and compete with Google.
• Google announces misrepresentation policy update: Failure to comply with the updated policy could result in the suspension of your Google Ads account.
• Google Gemini warning: Don’t share confidential information: Google Gemini privacy support pages warn that information shared with Gemini apps may be read and annotated by human reviewers and also be included into AI training datasets.
• OpenAI ChatGPT is testing a memory feature: OpenAI is rolling out a test of new ChatGPT memory feature that promises to reduce repetition and increase the quality of responses.
• OpenAI launces Sora: Sora is an AI model that can create realistic and imaginative scenes from text instructions.

🚨 WEB SECURITY & VULNERABILITIES

A collection of web security and vulnerability news and updates for the past week

Wordfence Intelligence Weekly WordPress Vulnerability Report (February 5, 2024 to February 11, 2024)

There were 95 vulnerabilities disclosed in 65 WordPress Plugins and 3 WordPress themes.

• Bricks 1.9.6.1 patches critical RCE vulnerability: The vulnerability that allowed attackers to potentially gain unauthorized control over websites was recently patched. All users are to update to the latest version immediately.
• WordPress SiteOrigin widgets bundle plugin vulnerability affects +600,000 sites: SiteOrigin widgets bundle WordPress plugin patched a stored XSS vulnerability recently and all users are to update to the latest version immediately.
• WordPress Vulnerability Report — February 14, 2024: Weekly vulnerability report from SolidWP.

🔌 NEW PLUGINS & THEMES

Be one of the first ones to explore some fresh plugins and themes

Norrsken theme

 A theme suitable for blog websites.

• Ezelian theme: A block theme with 5 patterns and 10+ theme colors.
• Legal Counselor theme: A theme suitable for legal professionals, attorneys, and law firms.
• Email marketing for WooCommerce plugin by Omnisend: A Simple to use email marketing, newsletter, sms marketing & automation plugin for Woocommerce.
• Countdown timer for WordPress plugin: The plugin allows users to add a countdown timer to pages or posts.
• Ultimate coming soon & maintenance plugin: It allows users to easily create a maintenance mode or coming soon page with a countdown timer effortlessly.

💵 INVESTMENTS, ACQUISITIONS & PARTNERSHIPS

• reSmush.it joins forces with ShortPixel: reSmush.it, an image compressor and optimizer plugin has been acquired by ShortPixel.
• Beacon has been acquired by OptinMonster: Beacon, a popular lead magnet solution has been recently acquired by OptionMonster.

👥 COMMUNITY NEWS

Updates and News from the WordPress Community

Community-driven WordPress hosting recommendations

A new initiative from Marcus Burnette, the community-driven WordPress hosting recommendations is created with transparency and community input at its core.

• Nominations now open for Plugin Madness 2024!: The nominations are open till Feb 26, 2024, and the voting will commence on March 4, 2024.
• Eric Karkovack completes 25 years in business: He launched Eric Karkovack Web Design Services in 1999.
• 6 applicants chosen for the first LGBTQ+Press Empowerment grant: Queeromattic will fund all six at the same $500 amount.
• WP Product Talk gearing up for season 4: WP Product Talk is looking for guests for the upcoming season and the application is now open.
• Press Marketing will be re-launching on Monday as Searching for Answers: Searching for Answers is the new Ellipsis newsletter as announced by Alex Denning on X.
• Historic sales milestones at Barn2 Plugins: Katie Keith recently shared the sales milestones achieved at Barn2 Plugins and it’s impressive. As per the report they have reached a cumulative sale of 80,000 plugins.
• Patchstack has been selected to join Google for Startups Growth Academy: Patchstack along with other startups has joined this program and will focus on AI in cybersecurity.

🔖 INTERESTING READS & PODCASTS

More blog posts and podcasts from WordPress Community you don’t want to miss

• What is CAPTCHA? How CAPTCHA works and the different types: From Melapress
• Using core data and sharing context across WordPress blocks: From Brian Coords
• Avoiding common pitfalls when first contributing to open source: From Angie Byron
• Overlapping problems: From Anne McCarthy
• Will WordPress 6.5 support custom fields?: From David McCan
• Cooking Websites: My favorite web design tools | Episode 1: From WPBakery
• Inside the Interactivity API: From WordPress Briefing
• Pressable: A radically different culture inside Automattic: From The WP Minute
• There is no competition in accessibility: From Anne-Mieke Bovelett
• Paying people to work on open source is good actually: From Jacob Kaplan-Moss
• Freenginx’s stand against corporate limits: Potentially A new era for WordPress hosting: From  WP Tavern
• Plugins: Offsite help (vulgar): From Half-Elf on Tech
• The reason we build WordPress plugins: From Matt Cohen
• How to start your next modern WordPress plugin: From Tanner Record
• What is a developer educator for an open-source project?: From Jonathan Bossenger
• The SEO checklist for beginners: From Yoast
• Paragraph length check: Why and how to write shorter paragraphs: From Yoast
• Why did Google Gemini “leak” chat data?: From Search Engine Journal
• The story behind my #wpkeralaphotos runner up photo: From Aaron Jorbin

🛠 GUIDE ZONE – HOWTO’S and MORE

Handpicked fresh guides from WordPress circle

• How do log in and registration work for developers?: From WordPress Developer Blog
• DIY block theme: From Automattic
• Run WP-CLI with Xdebug using Herd Pro: From Daniel Post
• How to duplicate a page in WordPress: From RankMath
• How to combine images using CSS Sprites in WordPress: From Jetpack
• How to use next-gen images with WordPress: From Delicious Brains
• End-to-end testing emails: From Wesley Aptekar-Cassels

📆 SAVE THE DATES

Do not miss a WordPress event ever again

• WordCamp Asia on March 7-9, 2024: The organizers are on the lookout for passionate individuals to lead the Community Team Table during the Contributor Day. The final batch of tickets will be released on Feb 21.
• WPEngine Decode 2024: The registrations are now open and the event will take place on March 19 in the U.S. and March 21 in EMEA.
• WordCamp Europe on 13-15 June 2024: The call for speakers, volunteers and sponsors is live. The call for photographers is now open.
• WordCamp Canada on July 11-13, 2024: The call for speakers is out.

🎁 WORDPRESS DEALS OF THE WEEK

Just the best deals of the week, again, handpicked by yours truly!

EXCLUSIVE DEALS

• 4 Months free offer on hosting plans of WP Engine (Coupon Code- FREEDOMTOCREATE)
• 15% off yearly plans at Videvo (Coupon Code – WPV15)

OTHER DEALS

• 30% off for 3 months + $1000 migration package for free on Email marketing for WooCommerce by Omnisend (Coupon Code- ONLYWOO)
• 40% off for 4 months on all hosting plans + 40 free migrations at Cloudways  (Coupon Code – BFCM4040)
• 53% off for NordLocker
• Up to 75% off on plugins, themes and hosting at WP Hive
• 50% off Web Hosting Packages at StableHost (Coupon Code – 50OFFYEAR1)
• 80% off for plugins at WPPool
• Up to 77% off hosting plans at HostPapa
• 50% off for Advanced Giftcards for WooCommerce plugin
• Upto 55% off hosting plans at Nexcess
• 86% off at AtlasVPN
• 30% off for Fluent Forms plugin
• 50% off at Formidable Forms
• 30% off for FluentCRM plugin
• 50% off for WP Social Ninja plugin 
• Upto 95% off for PitchGround products 
• Upto 75% off WordPress Hosting plans at InMotion Hosting
• 83% off hosting plans at SiteGround
• 60% off at Hostgator India (Coupon Code- SUNSHINE)
• Up to 74% off at Liquid Web
• 52% off on Managed Dedicated Server Hosting at Liquid Web

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